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The Enemies of Christopher Columbus: Answers to Critical Questions About the Spread of Western Civilization

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Here's a book that is long overdue.

Thomas Bowden's "The Enemies of Christopher Columbus" is simultaneously a devastating polemic against subjectivism, relativism and multiculturalism and a brilliant application of the proper methods of historical analysis.

It identifies the fundamentals and examines them in their full context.

The relativists claim that there is no moral difference between American Indian culture and Western culture...that all historical facts and all cultures are of equal merit and historical importance and ought to be given equal standing. They claim that there is no valid standard of objective good so there is no basis for a claim of the superiority of one culture over another. Therefore there is no justification for the destruction of one culture by another.

But there is an objective standard of the good, Bowden writes. It is to be found in the philosophy of Objectivism, in the identification by Ayn Rand that the furtherance of man's life and happiness is the standard by which the good must be measured. (For the complete validation of life as the standard of value see Ayn Rand's essay The Objectivist Ethics in The Virtue of Selfishness.)

"The fundamental issue." Bowden writes, "is whether the settlement of America by the bearers of Western civilization over the past five centuries was good or evil." By the standard of the requirements of man's life, his resounding conclusion: it was good. Western civilization, by every historical measure, by every requirement of man-the rational animal, is far superior to what it supplanted.

Written in question and answer format, Bowden takes on the claims of Columbus's relativist enemies one by one, exposes them and disposes of them.

To the question: "What good did Western civilization do for the many Indians who dies as a result of the European invasion?" Bowden answers that many Indians were indeed mistreated and killed by Western explorers and settlers. In this they were no different from the Indians themselves who were murdering and enslaving each other long before the Europeans came. But such acts, no matter who commits them, must be judged within the context of their times.

The fact remains that in 1492, the West was emerging from the darkness of post-Roman Europe. There was still much evil, brutality and superstition left from that thousand-year night but it was fading. Thanks largely to the reintroduction of Aristotelian logic and the resulting destruction of Christianity as a monolithic social and intellectual force, Western man was on his way to establishing the Enlightenment and its noblest achievement, The United States of America.

"It was the heirs of the Greek philosophical legacy," Bowden writes, "men such as John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and Adam Smith, who showed us a better path, a way to live in peaceful, cooperative, productive co-existence, without religious strife, bloody conquest, and slavery. Their solution was reason and individual rights...the civilized alternatives to superstition and force... Nothing in Indian culture came close to providing the seeds of such a radical development."

The discoveries of Christopher Columbus were the necessary first step in the creation of the noblest, freest nation the world had ever seen. It is for this, Bowden concludes, that we should honor him.

It is also why you should read this book.

This book is a brilliant antodote to modern political correctness and multi-culturalism which insists that one cannot claim that one culture is better than any other. Thomas Bowden skillfully explodes the myth that western culture is no better than that of primitive American Indian tribes which practiced human sacrifice and slavery, believed in primitive animism, and made no cultural progress, except in the realm of cultivating vegetables, during the many thousands of years they occupied the North and South American continents.

He shows that Columbus is a hero for striking out into the unknown at the risk of his own life and the lives of his crew and discovering, for Europe, a new world--a world to which he
helped bring western culture. Bowden demonstrates that Western culture (which was only partly developed at the time of Columbus's voyage) with its advocacy of reason, individual rights, freedom and technological progress is objectively superior to that of primitive Indian tribes by the standard of: human life.

Bowden ackowledges mistreatment of the Indians by the Europeans but shows that this was no different than the way the Indians treated each other and the Europeans treated each other. The concept of individual rights would not be discovered for another 200 years--but it was discovered by the west.

Bowden shows that the haters of Columbus are-to their discredit, haters of western civilization itself, which means: they are haters of man.

Finally, here is an antidote to the smears and slanders heaped on Columbus by the enemies of Western civilization and of America. Thomas Bowden poses many of the questions raised by political correctness and answers each with a calm and cogent "No." Didn't Columbus just stumble onto the New World? No, he thought he had discovered the Indies, but later realized that it was indeed a new world. Didn't the Europeans who followed him plunder Indian wealth? No, because the Indians had little or no wealth to plunder. Didn't the Europeans steal the Indians' land? No, because the Indians had no concept of property other than their personal and primitive tools and clothing. Didn't pre-Columbian peoples live in harmony with the
earth without Western technology, science, and medicine? No, they were worse off, in terms of health and longevity, than the beggars, homeless and street people in modern cities, at the mercy of the elements and of every catastrophe and germ that came their way.

Mr. Bowden answers these and more than a dozen other questions, questions unique in an age most of whose teachers and thinkers seek, by asking them, to diminish or destroy the achievements of individuals such as Columbus in the name of multiculturalism. This is a short book that should serve as a primer for anyone who values truth and factual history, and who may suspect that those who wish to destroy Columbus and erase his name from history have something in common with the terrorists who

attacked this country on 9/11.
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An absolutely great book, historically and philosophically. And it's a very entertaining read. You'll learn who the real Christopher Columbus was, and facts which contradict what most of our teachers have taught, and which so many multiculturalists spend their lives evading.

It is no secret that the political Left hates the West, because of what it stands for: reason, individualism, man's rights, capitalism. This is why Columbus, the "founder of the West," is one of the many heroes whom they denounce as evil; the truth is that they hate him because he was in fact, good. Ayn Rand called this "hatred of the good for being the good," (envy) and this is the essence of the enemies of Christopher Columbus.

This book will illuminate your mind.

This is a defense of Columbus and Western Civilization which you won't find anywhere else. It is filled with facts and cogent reasoning. A short and powerful book to set you thinking.

A brilliant book. It is well researched, tightly reasoned and passionately argued. When I finished it, I immmediately started again at page 1.

Great book. Used it for an argumentative essay I had to do on Columbus. Was one of the few books I could find that defended Columbus. He uses objectivity to determine his thesis.

Presented as a series of answers to questions about Columbus and about the discovery and settlement of America, the book addresses questions that might be asked by an honest individual who has been indoctrinated with the falsehoods and anti-Western invective now pervasive in our schools. However, it is also of value to those readers who already understand and oppose the corrupt ideas of today's intellectuals, but who may not know the real historical facts about Columbus and the settlement of America. The Enemies of Christopher Columbus is a forceful defense of Christopher Columbus-and of Western Civilization in general-against the multiculturalist assault.

Being born on Columbus day I have always been fascinated with Columbus and his voyages of discovery. I have read many, many books on Columbus but none that penetrate to the deeper meaning of what he accomplished than this book by Mr. Bowden.

It is at once a defense against the current crop of history revisionists and multi-culturalists who would like nothing more than to have the public believe that western civilization is no better than the tribal savages that existed in the Americas prior to Columbus' arrival here.

Bowden shows due respect to the heroism of Columbus while providing an abundance of fodder to combat the mocking birds of political correctness infesting our universities.

A must read!

I highly recommend this book. The book is not a biography of Columbus, but rather, an answer to questions posed by the growing multi-culturist movement questioning the greatness of Christopher Columbus' achievement. Mr. Bowden does not spare Columbus critizism for some of his actions, but he cogently argues that Columbus's life must be understood in the context of knowledge available to him in the time he lived, in the same way that all our lives must be judged, including the way of life of those people who were still living in a much more primitive state of existence.

The book answers the questions of the multi-culturalists and more, it gives the reader a firm appreciation of the immense value of Western Civilization, and a recognition of the nature of life in primitive societies and how such societies value human life, life devoid of the recognition of the value of reason in achieving the value of human life.